Imperious, Chapter 021 - Becoming an Engraver 1 (Patreon)

Even with the new workstation, the process of gradually getting used to using her engraving skill took more time than she had expected. This wasn’t helped by the fact that she could only sit there and stare through a magnifying glass for so long before it grew tiresome. She decided on the first day of working with the practice plates that she would divy up her time with something unrelated to engraving in order to break up the monotony: mace training.

She would have tried to practice with a gun, if she had one, but her mother’s gun was still in pieces on the floor in the boss room. So she settled for concentrating on her Mace proficiency. Unlike the original bludgeoning weapons proficiency that only seemed to guide her by notifying her of her errors, the more focused skill provided significantly more information. Every time she took a swing she felt as if the muscle tension was urging her to take another step or shift position and continue moving. It wasn’t hard to figure out that it was teaching her attack patterns that would be far more effective than just wildly swinging the hunk of metal around.

After some training, a shower, and a meal she would move back to the workstation where she would go through well over nearly a hundred plates at a time until she was comfortable with pulling back one of the lenses and repeating the process until she was proficient again. It took three days finally going from lenses to free engraving with just holding it in her hand. The trick had come by accident and had completely changed her perspective on the process.

She had been going from plate to plate, engraving them with only two lenses left when she’d run out of plates in the box she had within reach. Only one left in her hand. Looking away for a moment, Anna grabbed the next box and pulled it over while going over the next pattern she was going to practice in her head. Without even thinking, her mind going through the process she’d repeated over a thousand times at this point, she looked back and found that the plate was engraved before she even started.

That had been a game changer and after some trial and error she was able to shift entirely to just closing her eyes and engraving without even looking at the plate. She knew she’d achieved the goal of the practice when she felt a warmth at the back of her mind and noted that her engraving skill had at last increased to low tier. It was around the same time that she’d managed to increase her mace proficiency to low as well.

“Finally,” She sighed, hands on her hips as she regarded the pile of successful plates she’d made. A lot of them weren’t perfect and she set those aside as she didn’t trust them to work right, but in the end she managed to craft about a hundred unlock plates.

Simple Unlocking Plate (Common-Grade)
This metal card has been engraved with a simple unlocking rune allowing it to be used to disengage mundane locks.

She sighed at the piles and piles of ruined metal and imperfect plates, there was a lot of waste in this early stage, but she’d managed.

“On to the next step,” She said brightly, though not before she raced to the kitchenette and unlocked the stove and refrigerator, finding actual fucking food inside. Mostly vegetables and meats that she could turn into stews and whatnot, there were tragically no spices or any sort of salt or butter, but she’d happily make do with never eating a mushroom again if she could.

Thus began her tireless training in the workshop. She would read and study in the morning, working on picking up new runes and spells. After that she would move on to plate training with the next level up. After that she would bounce between practicing with her mace and experimenting with the spells she already knew. Finally she would go back to plate training, working tirelessly towards her goal. There was no time limit on the dungeon but she knew she had to leave eventually. She didn’t know what kind of situation she would come out to, but she swore she would be ready compared to her flailing about before she’d entered this amazing place.

The gold plates had, obviously, been harder to work with. The challenge turned out to be controlling just how much mana she was putting into the process. While engraving the steel there was no concern about it, but the gold alloy just melted with the first couple of attempts and left her frustrated. It turned out that while not a skill in its own right, mana control was something one could practice and get good at. In the end, hundreds of plates later, she’d managed to feel the warm glow of reaching the mid level of her engraving skill.

Her work was tireless, but not without rewards. Apparently she was gaining experience in her profession with every successful craft and she’d started to level up after a while. 

Level up! You have reached Level 2 in your Engraving Profession
+1 Ins, +1 Int, +1 Pre, +2 Free Points

Level up! You have reached Level 3 in your Engraving Profession
+1 Ins, +1 Int, +1 Pre, +2 Free Points

As for her product, she was pretty proud of it.

Simple Reinforcing Plate (Common-Grade)
This gold-alloy card has been engraved with a simple reinforcing rune and binding rune allowing it to be attached to a mundane object and temporarily increase its durability.

She wanted to practice the reinforcing rune to see if she could use it to improve her armor in the future and was pleased with the results. These plates could be attached to damn near anything and add a little extra durability, possibly turning an obstacle into something far more frustrating for an opponent. She wished she’d had these during the skeleton attack when the integration first took place. In total she’d made about fifty of them.

Then came the new spells she picked up, finally rounding off the basic spells that she could have picked from when she chose her class. It was a shame that there weren’t more spellbooks she could reference for the specific magic circles to learn new spells, but she got the feeling that had more to do with the system interfering with the legacy that had been left behind for her. Even so, the runes that made up future spells were plentiful.

New Spell Acquired!

Create Bludgeon (Common-Base)
You create a simple bludgeoning implement that lasts for a brief period of time. Mana consumption cost is based on Will, Durability and strength of the weapon is based on Intellect.

New Spell Acquired!

Repair Object (Common-Base)
You repair a non-magical mundane object back to its original condition. Mana consumption cost is based on Will, Speed and quality of the repair is based on Intellect.

Individually the spells weren’t all that great, but together they provided a solid foundation for her to work off of and come up with new ideas in the future. She had plenty, but she needed to focus on the quest for the time being. Also she could go up and see about piecing together the gun when she had a chance.

After moving on to the black glass plates she found that they required maintaining smaller and more precise engravings. Going too deep would result in the plate cracking without warning. During this time she pushed her mace proficiency to mid as well and started to feel like the various attack patterns were coming close to muscle memory. Anna felt like her progress was beginning to accelerate at this point, the practice of improving herself coming more and more easily. There were days when her blood literally boiled while she was working, ambition driving her forward with near fanaticism.

While she was wrapping up her practice with the black glass plates she was pleased to see a few of her spells she’d been practicing in the mornings had reached low rank; Mana Bolt and Pathetic Illusion. Mana Bolt made her feel kind of bad because she had been using the door to the vault for target practice. She was still a long way from improving Heal Minor Wound because it increased her mana tolerance by a whole point on top of the cost itself every time she cast it and she had to hurt herself to make any progress. Not fun.

Finally feeling the warm glow of advancement for her Engraving skill had come with the creation of her latest and greatest toys as well as another level in her profession.

Simple Flashbang Plate (Common-Grade)
This black glass card has been engraved with a simple but slightly unstable pairing of light and sound runes. When charged and thrown it will burst on impact, creating an intense sound and flash of light at the point of impact.

Level up! You have reached Level 4 in your Engraving Profession
+1 Ins, +1 Int, +1 Pre, +2 Free Points

She snickered when she set aside the successful pile of thirty five flashbangs, looking forward to using them on those fucking devils.

Finally she moved on to the glass plates and they had taken everything she’d learned to even attempt them. The moment she touched one and concentrated on her skill for the first time it had literally exploded in her hand, giving her the unfortunate opportunity to practice Heal Minor Wound on shredded fingers. Of all the plates, the glass plates had taken the most effort to get a handle on. She went through box after box of plates, struggling to get past basic runes and patterns. There was no trick or special obstacle to overcome. She simply had to get good, but the feeling of reaching peak in her skill was out of this world and had come with a surprise.

The Skill Engraving has reached Peak Rank. You must advance to the next tier before further progress can be made and the skill transfigured into the next stage.

“Tier? Like on my character sheet?” She’d wondered. It was the first hint about what the line on her character sheet even meant. It was a little disappointing that she couldn’t just power level and move on to the next stage of the skill, whatever that was, “Advanced Engraving? Intermediate?” She mumbled to herself with amusement as she set aside the pathetic few successful crafts from her endless toil.

Simple Healing Plate (Common-Grade)
This glass card has been engraved with a simple healing rune. When charged with mana and crushed it will cast a weak healing spell on the user.

It’s a fucking healing potion, she told herself without a hint of shame. There were only fifteen but that wasn’t terrible in the grand scheme of things. At least she’d managed to make them. She took a moment after that to check her progress on her other skills only to find that her maces skill had slowed down a little, still not hitting high rank. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was missing but would keep her practice up regardless. With her success her level had gone up a few times as well.

Level up! You have reached Level 5 in your Engraving Profession
+1 Ins, +1 Int, +1 Pre, +2 Free Points

Level up! You have reached Level 6 in your Engraving Profession
+1 Ins, +1 Int, +1 Pre, +2 Free Points

Level up! You have reached Level 7 in your Engraving Profession
+1 Ins, +1 Int, +1 Pre, +2 Free Points

It was way easier to level up her profession over her class, though the downside was the middling returns. She still hadn’t spent any of the points, holding off until the end so she knew exactly what to dump them all on. Instead she moved on to the next phase; disenchanting.

At first Anna had thought she could just jump into engraving and repairing after she got her skill bumped up to handle the fragile material the cores were made out of. It turned out that would have been a really bad idea. While mana alone was good enough for making the simple little single-use spell plates, essence was needed to create a self perpetuating enchantment. One had to gather essence from a variety of sources including the disenchantment of monster cores and items.

And so her toil continued, she knew that if she left the dungeon now, based on the description of the quest, she would fail it. After all the work she’d put in, she fucking refused to do that.

Anna grabbed an armful of the practice disenchantment items and looked through them. They were all plates, but as she looked at the runes hoping to find something useful she was instead disappointed. The engravings were just rune-less lines. She sat in front of the pile and scratched her head, “You can do that?” She muttered, turning a plate over in her hand and frowning, “Did he literally burn through essence and all this stuff just to give his inheritor something to practice with?”

Now that she said it out loud, it made sense. She did feel a bit miffed that she wouldn’t be able to yoink any enchantment ideas from the plates, though.

As for what she was supposed to put essence into, that was something she’d read about during her many study sessions. Essence could be stored in a monster core or in a suitable receptacle. She eventually found what she was looking for after digging around through the entire workshop. It was a softball sized sphere that looked like it was made entirely out of glass, it was remarkably transparent without a single hint of bubbles or uneven surfaces.

Essence Vessel (Common-Grade)
This vessel is used for the containment of essence. 

“No duh,” She mumbled at the description from the identify skill. Sometimes the skill could be incredibly unhelpful. Fortunately she actually took the time to study instead of slamming her head against a wall like a maniac and knew that all one had to do was touch both the vessel and the target of disenchantment at the same time while using the skill.

Taking a breath she held the plate out in the palm of her hand and focused on the skill. Unlike engraving where she immediately felt a bit of her consciousness inside of her target, she instead felt like threads of something were reaching out of her palm and grabbing hold of the object. What followed was so fast it took her a few seconds to even realize it had taken place. One instant the plate was in her hand and the next it had turned to dust, that something growing more intense in her palm before racing through her body and leaking out into the vessel.

“Woah!” She looked down at the vessel and saw some white smoke floating inside of it. “Was that essence? That was wild,” She said breathlessly.

She checked her mana tolerance and found that it hadn’t increased by a point, whatever she’d done, it didn’t involve mana. “Alright! If that’s the case,” She hopped to her feet and ran to the storage room grabbing all the stuff she could carry. She dropped it all in a heap at her work station. “Let's get started!”